Executive Summary
- Battlefield assessment. Russian forces retained an offensive footing across the conflict’s principal flashpoints, while Ukraine intensified its deep strikes against Russia.
- Russian drone innovations. Russia is developing the Shahed-baseline drone into its own networked, multi-mission Geran family, equipped with advanced systems that will complicate Ukraine’s efforts to intercept it.
- Potential North Korean deployments. North Korea may provide Russia with 30,000 additional troops and further support for its missile programs. In return, Pyongyang’s forces will receive combat experience that could affect the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula.
- Strikes on Iranian supply routes. Ukraine struck supply routes in the Caspian Sea linking Russia and Iran, prompting a response from Tehran that may raise the risk of direct escalation with Kyiv.
1. Battlefield Assessment
Drone and missile warfare continued to shape the conflict in Ukraine, which once again centered on deep strikes and attritional air raids.
Ukraine sustained its long-range salvos against Russia’s military logistics architecture on July 27 and into July 28. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, these attacks struck a logistics warehouse and a depot storing fuel and lubricants near Ichki in occupied Crimea, as well as a facility storing Russian military drones near Chervonopopivka in occupied Luhansk Oblast.
Ukraine’s most strategically significant strike targeted the Prioritet facility in Borok, Udmurt Republic, deep inside the Russian Federation. Operated by Russia’s Federal Agency for State Reserves, Prioritet is a classified component of Rosrezerv, the Russian agency responsible for storing, securing, and managing reserves of food, equipment, and fuel. Ukrainian military authorities reported a confirmed impact and subsequent fire at the facility.
Russia launched another large-scale drone assault against Ukraine overnight on July 27–28, employing 131 Shahed, Gerbera, Italmas, and other unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the attack. According to Ukrainian military authorities, air-defense and electronic-warfare units intercepted or suppressed 107 drones across the country’s northern, southern, eastern, and western regions. Sixteen UAVs nevertheless struck nine locations, while debris from intercepted aerial targets fell at six additional sites.
Russia’s attack package originated from launch areas near Bryansk, Kursk, and Oryol in Russia, and from sites in occupied Donetsk and Crimea. Ukrainian combat aircraft, surface-to-air missile units, electronic warfare assets, unmanned systems detachments, and mobile fire groups participated in Ukraine’s defensive effort. The Russian air raid remained underway as of the morning of July 28, with several Russian drones still operating inside Ukrainian airspace.
The land war continued to witness a heightened operational tempo, with more than 200 tactical engagements recorded each day. The principal flashpoints remained largely unchanged, with Kostiantynivka, Pokrovsk, Sloviansk, Lyman, Kupiansk, and Huliaipole absorbing the brunt of the Russian offensive. Russian forces retained the initiative and remained on an offensive footing against the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yet the cost of sustaining this posture continued to rise, with Russia reportedly losing the equivalent of a regiment-sized formation—approximately 1,500 personnel—each day.
Under the leadership of the country’s recently ousted defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine set an objective of inflicting 50,000 casualties a month on Russian forces. Although this ambitious target remains beyond Ukraine’s immediate reach, current attrition trends suggest that Kyiv is gradually moving closer to achieving this once-unthinkable goal.
2. Russia’s Geran Drone Evolves from a Low-Cost Munition to a Networked Multi-Mission Weapon
Open-source assessments of weapon systems suggest that Russia has standardized the key guidance, communications, and navigation components across its camera-equipped Gerbera Seeker and Geran Seeker drones. This standardization signals that Moscow is trying to field a modular family of reconnaissance-strike systems.
The Seeker drone package can reportedly be integrated into Russia’s Geran-2, Geran-3, and Geran-4 variants. The jet-powered Geran-4 Seeker has already become increasingly prominent in Russian reporting on the war. This new configuration combines multiple electro-optical cameras with a mesh-network radio modem for operator control.
But the Seeker’s most consequential feature is a machine-vision suite based on Raspberry Pi, a series of small, low-cost, single-board computers. This machine-vision suite provides Russia’s evolved drones with automatic target recognition, acquisition, and terminal guidance: once a drone operator designates a target, the drone can autonomously maintain its track and complete its attack even if the command link to the operator is disrupted during the terminal phase. This innovation reduces the effectiveness of low-power electronic warfare countermeasures that an opposing force might launch.
The Gerbera Seeker retains the airframe, flight controller, servomechanisms, and other components of the baseline Gerbera. But the Seeker adds an inertial navigation system and a 12-element, jam-resistant, Kometa-M satellite-navigation antenna that had previously been employed on Geran-2 drones.
Russian forces are using this new platform for both reconnaissance and strike missions. According to Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence, Russian robotic-warfare combat formations have been tasked with launching attacks against fuel stations and civilian vehicles, including trucks, buses, and passenger cars, in frontline and border regions. Geran Seeker and Gerbera Seeker drones are among the systems Moscow has earmarked for these operations.
The Gerbera Seeker may also offer Russia a cheaper alternative to its increasingly vulnerable Orlan, ZALA, and Supercam reconnaissance drones, as well as Lancet loitering munitions. The proliferation of Ukrainian interceptor drones has accelerated Russia’s losses of these more expensive platforms. Consequently, Moscow has shifted portions of its reconnaissance-strike mission toward lower-cost systems enabled with machine vision.
The Geran-2 is Russia’s domestically produced derivative of Iran’s HESA Shahed-136, a low-cost, propeller-driven one-way attack drone first used in Ukraine in September 2022. Now mass-produced and launched in nightly salvos numbering in the hundreds, the Geran-2 features heavier and thermobaric warheads, hardened navigation, mobile-network and Starlink terminals, artificial intelligence–assisted targeting, and air-to-air variants.
The Geran’s transition to jet propulsion represents the most consequential development in its evolution. Derived from Iran’s Shahed-238, the Geran-3 replaces the original system’s piston engine with a Tolou-10/13 turbojet, which authorities widely assess to be an unlicensed derivative of the PBS TJ100/TJ150. First documented in June 2025, this Geran-3 variant complicates the efforts of air-defense systems optimized to guard against piston-powered Gerans flying at roughly 112 miles per hour. Russia has also unveiled the more powerful Geran-4 and Geran-5, which abandon the platform’s delta-wing design in favor of a small cruise-missile configuration. These variants can be air-launched from Su-25 aircraft.
The Geran-5 reportedly incorporates a Chinese-origin turbojet rated at approximately 440 pounds of thrust. This innovation provides the drone with a maximum range of about 590 miles and a top speed of roughly 373 miles per hour while retaining the Geran-2’s 198-pound payload. Russia also appears to be pursuing air-to-air configurations of the Geran-4 and Geran-5 armed with R-73 missiles. This pursuit reflects Moscow’s growing interest in using one-way attack drones against Ukrainian helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft conducting counter-drone missions.
Russian occupation forces have already tested Geran variants carrying R-60 missiles and Verba man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) in combat operations. Recovered Geran-5 debris and datalink analysis further suggest that Russia is integrating the mesh-network technology already fielded on some piston-powered Geran-2s into its jet-powered variants of the drone.
3. A New North Korean Expedition in Ukraine May Soon Commence
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned last week that Russia is preparing to receive another 30,000 troops from North Korea, alongside additional North Korean ballistic missiles. The deployment of such a large fighting force would mark a major expansion of the military partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang.
North Korean forces involved in the Russia-Ukraine War—believed to be drawn largely from the elite 11th Corps, or Storm Corps, of the Korean People’s Army—have thus far operated primarily in Russia’s Kursk region, where they helped Moscow recapture most of the territory Ukraine seized during its August 2024 offensive. The battlefield contributions of these North Korean troops have reportedly come at a high price, as some 6,000 North Korean personnel have been killed or wounded during the fighting. The strict indoctrination and rules of engagement guiding Pyongyang’s troops have made them difficult to capture alive as prisoners of war. Many North Korean servicemen reportedly opt to commit suicide before Ukrainian forces can capture them.
Pyongyang’s support for Moscow’s war effort extends beyond manpower. North Korea has dispatched thousands of laborers to Russia and has supplied Russia with KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles, long-range artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS), and millions of artillery rounds. South Korean intelligence estimated in July 2025 that North Korean deliveries to Russia had exceeded 12 million 152mm-class artillery rounds. Additionally, Ukrainian military intelligence assesses that North Korea now supplies roughly half of Russia’s artillery ammunition. Some Russian formations have reportedly become nearly dependent on North Korea made munitions.
The partnership between Russia and North Korea is also moving into unmanned warfare. The two allies have reportedly agreed to establish North Korean production facilities for Shahed-type attack drones, while Russian instructors are training North Korean personnel to operate first-person view (FPV) systems near the North Korean city of Wonsan and in Pyongyang. Notes recovered from a North Korean special forces officer killed in combat contained instructions for evading artillery fire and countering hostile drones, illustrating how quickly Pyongyang’s forces are absorbing battlefield lessons.
This transfer of combat knowledge may ultimately prove as consequential as any transfer of weapons. In fighting Russia’s war against Ukraine, North Korean troops are gaining direct experience in electronic warfare, counter-drone operations, fiber-optic FPV systems, long-range unmanned strikes, and the broader mechanics of modern high-intensity warfare. As President Zelenskyy warned earlier this year, these personnel will eventually return home with operational knowledge that could reshape North Korea’s military capabilities.
These developments underscore how a hostile coalition encompassing China, Iran, North Korea, and Belarus is sustaining Russia’s invasion. For Pyongyang, the Kursk deployment gave its forces a laboratory where they gained direct experience in digitally networked combat characterized by pervasive surveillance, electronic warfare, and robotic systems. These lessons could have profound long-term implications for the military balance on the Korean Peninsula.
The immediate question is whether the additional North Korean troops will defend Russian territory or participate in direct combat in occupied Ukrainian territory. In the latter case, Moscow may invoke its illegal annexation of sovereign Ukrainian lands to claim that North Korean deployments are occurring within the Russian Federation.
4. What to Look for in the Coming Weeks
Ukraine opened a new front in two increasingly intertwined wars when it struck maritime supply lines linking Iran and Russia across the Caspian Sea. Tehran condemned Ukraine’s drone attack on what it described as a commercial vessel and asserted that it has the right to take “appropriate action” in defense of its interests. Additionally, the pro-Iran Telegram channel Middle East Spectator circulated a map claiming that the Khorramshahr-4 ballistic missile could place the entirety of Ukraine within Iranian striking range.
No official Iranian source has echoed this threat. After Ukraine’s strike in the Caspian, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha spoke with his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, to warn Tehran against escalation and demand that it stop supporting Russia.
This episode illustrates how the war between Russia and Ukraine is spilling beyond its initial theater. The expansion exposes the logistical arteries of the Russia-Iran partnership and raises the prospect that attacks on those networks could provoke a more direct confrontation between Kyiv and Tehran.